Before You Buy: 5 Tips for Choosing Dev Software

Choice #1: Cross-Platform or Platform Specific

Products across the development landscape fall into two categories: cross-platform or platform specific-products.

Cross-platform tools give developers the ability to build projects on any platform, such as Windows, Mac or Linux. In the case of mobile development, cross-platform refers to mobile platforms such as Android, iPhone, Windows, BlackBerry or Samsung.

Platform-specific tools are products that focus on development for a single platform.

Developers tend to prefer products that are cross-platform, providing the ability to create products that work universally while cutting down on development time. However, some platform-specific products provide developers with tools to utilize native features.

What this means for software providers: Developers want a product that allows them to build projects across platforms, or one that utilizes a specific platform's native capabilities. Software providers should highlight product features in the category to properly target their audiences.

What this means for software buyers: Developers should consider which platforms a project will run on before purchasing development software.

With each passing day, the expected pace of development increases. With more access, more tools and more knowledge sharing, project managers expect delivery of more impressive work in less time. To meet these expectations, developers have come to rely on a variety of tools that save time, allow them to track changes, and collaborate on projects. But which ones should you choose?

G2 Crowd recently released a bundle of reports around seven categories of software development products. A variety of data trends were uncovered using real user insights. In this slideshow, Levi Olmstead and Jaclyn Rose, G2 Crowd, have identified five trends to consider when starting the process of buying development software.

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